Reflections (Oil Bar Painting as of July 23, 2013)

Reflections (Oil Bar Painting as of July 23, 2013), a photo by randubnick on Flickr.

This is my oil bar painting as it looked when I finished painting today. This landscape is based on a photo I took last summer at Bradley Palmer State Park in Topsfield, MA. (The reference photo is posted here, June 14.) Yesterday I worked on placement of the trees in the foreground on the right and left. Although I was happy with the tree on the right, the tree on the left bothered me because it seemed to be making the scene too crowded and I was losing the sense of space opening up in the distance. In yesterday's post I said that I had decided needed to either 1) paint out all of part of that tree, 2) move the tree over a bit more, or 3) moving the shoreline over just a bit to increase the sense of space. This morning I work up around 5:30 AM with a plan, so I decided to get up and paint. I moved the tree on the left closer to the edge of the canvas and pulled back on the foliage just a bit. I looked hard at the reference photo and the canvas, and realized that one of the problems is that second set of three trees in the distance wasn't lined up where it should be, so I moved it towards the center of the canvas. That was the key. Then I moved trees, foliage, and reflections on the left-hand side, scooting everything toward the center, to make more room for open sky and bright water. I began to feel like the space in the distance was opening up again, so I was very happy. I also did a little work on the tree on the right. Yesterday I used pink paint to indicate the trees and foliage in the foreground, just temporarily so I can see more clearly what goes where. But I thought that might be making the trees more prominent, and adding to the sense that the space was crowded. In the reference photo, the foliage of the trees in the foreground is dark green and blends in to the rest of the scene. So I added some green to the tree on the right, and watched as the foliage began to blend in to the rest of the scene. I only worked for about an hour, but I feel like it was time well spent, because I think this painting is back on track.